The most feasible thing is probably to reaffirm liberal and free market values. To clearly state absolutely everything good that capitalism has ever done for us. Why? To make sure for yourself and to everybody who dares to listen that...

Here's a fun little yarn about MH370: The possible flight paths are pretty close Pakistan. Which is a famously unstable country, full of people who are somewhat upset about being droned by the US and of those not being droned,...

My hypothesis so far is a fire in just the wrong spot being undetected or ignored for just long enough to cause widespread system failure. Boeing had *cough* one or two of those lately, so I guess it's not entirely...

The film is good. Though I think it would be at least 10% better with 50% less gratuitous scenery porn. That is, scenery being shown without showing action or narration. I'm not saying it's bad, rather it's too much. I'd...

No, I cannot agree that you can discount China as part of WWI and WWII. It wasn't just about China being a wreck. It was about Japanese invading the county, as well as many other countries in southeast asia, killing...

Doesn't work. That's because some people are actually *good* at doing what they are doing. And I don't mean "good" in a quantitative sense, but in a qualitative one. They can do things that other people simply can't do. Restricting...

In the end you don't really have to structure the society, you should let the society structure itself. The reason why this isn't happening is that people haven't realized and internalized that our society doesn't need the full employment of...

Yes, the book is absolutely beautiful and bought two copies of it, so that's something. However, none of that will change the fact that satellites in a polar orbit will not cross the sky through the (celestial) northpole ... unless...

For 2003 anything involving "Fracking". (For 99+% of the population.) I keep thinking about telling my grandfather about biofuels back in 1991, when he was still alive. I'm from a small town (pop. 25,000) that annually consumes 700.000 tons of...

Competent police work? You do know that he was found after a local resident told the police that there was blood on the tarp over a boat? All that only after the lock down was over. Before that, the "professionals"...

All I could think of is this: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” The whole thing is beyond belief for me. In terms of the loss of liberty,...

> "Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist - Kenneth Boulter, Economist." Or they are using a non-constant scale. Such as saying that a 60Mhz Pentium processor...

Charlie, the problem with hydrogen isn't storage. You make methane from hydrogen and storage kind of works (much better than the alternatives anyway). The problem is hydrogen is high entropy. You take low-entropy electricity, make hydrogen (or some derivate like...

Past performance is no indication of future longevity. About 100 years ago, China stopped being ruled by an Emperor - which has been the case for about as long as there has been a catholic church. It is easily imaginable...

The worst about all this is - as usual - the media coverage. Little to no fact checking and mindless repetition of whatever somebody with "authority" said. There are claims that the asteroid had just 10 tons ... well, 1000...

Replace jacket with spacecraft and pants with spacesuit. There have been distinctly human beings on the moon after all. I didn't mean to say "and thus we'll settle the universe" in any case. Merely that at least as a biological...

There is the problem that for tapewormkind to change, the tapeworms themselves need to change in order to live in the rest of their shitty universe. On the other hand, for humankind to change doesn't require any changes to individual...

I want to apologize sincerely if my post created the impression that environmental activists bear the least resemblance to such groups as the KKK. This would not be a sincere apology, if I would not also say, that I do...

There is no point in making an apology for observing that disaffected and angry people tend to join groups of other disaffected and angry people. Some do indeed join racist or violent groups, others join groups who are not, like...

I didn't say or imply that groups of highly visible, disaffected and angry people are evil. Just that they consist of disaffected and angry people. I for one prefer those disaffected and angry people who don't join violent or racist...

Comment Threads

I thought it was the media reaction to his policy in interviews. We Brits are very traditional about our feudal overlords, and the "Westminister media" tends to respect that. The bellicose Labour chap had such a long term relationship with the media pool that he was "call me Tony" Blair - "please, treat me as your friend rather than the head of state". The Rt Hon D. Cameron, Bullingdon Club, attempted to pick up some of this credibility, by playing down his formal rank, hence, "call-me-dave"....

"Feudal overlords" doesn't fit. Fealty goes both ways. If they don't protect us, if they don't put their lives and honour on the line for us, we cannot be their vassals. The media sucking up to those in power is a whole different ugliness....

:) You're not suggesting that there's a reason that the many children of the hereditary nobility get packed off to Sandhurst or Dartmouth*, and a few years of getting cold or hot, miserable, and shot at, are you? :) It's rather in contrast to the children of politicians getting packed off to an internship with a US Senator, then a quiet parachuting in for a constituency selection... * You'll notice I didn't say Cranwell, one must have some standards :)...

I'm sure there's a reason. Not convinced an outdated sense of feudal duty is the one though. Some of them, like having a family doctor, lawyer and the like make sense when viewed from the outside. Family army officer or naval officer, not so immediately obvious. But it seems to work for them....

Well, those who were convinced there was a master plan how are you feeling in light of the appearance of a mad scrabble to firm up plans for both the time-table and the details of exactly what devo-max will entail after a no vote to try and persuade (or bribe depending on your POV) the Scots back to voting no? Even the BBC, which the Scots feel has been quite biased in it's coverage (pro-No) had an element of glee in their interview with Alistair Darling on Today this morning asking just how badly the wheels had come off and...